The particularly worrying thing here is that they're now going to be gathering training data for a conversational model on _how to influence people effectively even when they already know they are being influenced_. Even more than RLFH already does. "We had to build the Torment Nexus so our children could eat" is not a good reason to build the Torment Nexus. The fact that they are not committing to not doing this tells me that either no one thought about what else this could be used for, or the short term gains are all they are thinking about.
Yes... but that's Google from the moment they started monetizing.
When it was a research project at Stanford in 1996 it was genuinely about making the World information accessible.
The day in 2000 when they decided to sell advertisement is exactly when this process started, not just now in 2026. Since that day they transformed from a knowledge management project to an advertising company that used knowledge management, among other tools, to influence people effectively.
It's the same for Meta except they had Google business model as an example.
Those are advertising company that use tech, not real tech companies like e.g. ASML or IBM.
Of course it is possible Google will create something orders of magnitude better but I doubt it. Amazon is already doing product recommendation on their front page and while it certainly drives sales it doesn’t turn people into zombies buying products they don’t want.
What did work really well was the “1 click buy” button. Reducing the friction for people who already want to buy is usually a much higher ROI than persuading people who previously weren’t interested.
I really don't get why 1CB isn't more common than it is.
The obvious answer is "patents", but software patents aren't valid in Europe; and besides, the Amazon patent has expired; and European stores are, if anything, far, far more horrendous than American ones.
I guess upsells are more profitable than one-click these days?
That assessment highly depends on your region I assume. They are far from 7 day shipping for me. In fact, it's the same 2-3 days as Amazon for non-Prime customers here. Speaking of non-Prime, free shipping is also at 50€.
The limited selection is certainly true but mainly it misses drop shipping stuff and what's essentially a mirror of aliexpress with a huge markup. I don't really miss those. In fact, it requires a considerable amount of time to navigate through those offers on Amazon, so not having them is a plus in my book.
Thank you - never heard of galaxus.com before, but it is fantastic ! So much more high-quality than the Temu-cheap-shit-reselling storefront that Amazon is nowadays.
Me, too. I love that they have tables with return and warranty percentages so you can see which products other people kept and which products only keep breaking.
My favorite example of why advertising/marketing is important but not overwhelming/unstoppable is in the hit-based industries: If the industry had a "make a superstar" button or a "make a blockbuster movie" button they could just keep mashing, they'd be mashing it constantly. You wouldn't see franchises go from top-of-the-world to decline like Marvel or Fast and Furious. You wouldn't see expensive new bombs or failure-to-launch reboots. There is countless chatter out there about industry plants, organic vs PR-shilling word of mount campaigns, etc. But... if that's all it took, it would be wayyyyy more constant. A lot of words spilled recently about a band, Geese, and how their buzz wasn't as organic as it seemed... for a band that's still, at the end of the day, quite niche and small-in-audience...
It's very hard to get a huge hit without marketing - even great word of mouth benefits from amplification - but it's also near-impossible to force a hit into an audience that isn't vibing with it. The highest-grossing movies, or highest-listened pop music, is a combo of marketing + accurately hitting extremely-common/trendy tastes. See also iPhone marketing vs Windows Phone marketing. I thought Windows Phone was better; none of my friends or coworkers was convinced even after I showed them my phones. The mass media consumer may not have thought much about their tastes or tried very hard to be more adventurous, but that doesn't mean they don't like the stuff they're eating.
I think this is still in many ways bad - at the very least, it's incredibly inefficient to have a billion-dollar zero-sum "pick this one over that one" industry. But I don't think it's a deadly threat. (See also any number of "tons of money and star-power behind them" failed political candidates too...)
Meanwhile, here in Japan I've been in touch with several companies, some small, some quite large (e.g. some building companies) which have a policy of no advertising. No marketing. None. They don't do it. They mostly do have web sites, but that's all. They say they rely on word of mouth, and from what I can tell it works, they're all busy. They say that instead of using money for advertising they want to use everything for the products.
I think marketing is one factor for success, quality is another, but an under-appreciated third one is just getting more shots on goal until one finally succeeds.
I think this is one of the most under-appreciated explanations of why American-style capitalism succeeded where soviet-style communism failed. In theory, communism is more economically efficient, as you don't have multiple companies duplicating work and re-inventing variations on the same idea. In practice, it's much harder to judge an idea than a finished product, so the best way to make a good product is to do it by evolution, not up-front design. If the whole country is oriented around making X happen, X must happen, whether it is a good idea or not.
In general, markets are a really elegant solution to the allocation of goods. It’s really difficult to plan out how steel should be allocated or how many pairs of shoes we should make this year.
Even worse, many Soviet factories were incentivized to lie about the quantity of goods produced or sacrifice quality to meet quotas. So as a first order, approximation, markets are really nice solution to this.
Of course there are many known market failures, which can disrupt such a fragile system if not addressed. For example, monopolies and information asymmetries.
Some people also believe that part of the failures of the planned economy was a limitation of the technology at the time. Without computers, it wasn’t that easy to track the outputs of factories to enforce quality. Those people argue that a modern day planned economy might look a little bit more like Amazon does internally. Maybe still not a great place to live though.
Its not worrying for me. This is what I expect from ad companies so I walk in prepared. What I'm more interested in is how we are going to take this new technology and give it back to people without trying to rip into them, for free. We need a Stallman / Linus of AI.
the rationale is theyre a business and selling is valuable. acting like theyre naively building influence peddling is how we got here. theyre now "dont not be evil"
I'm really worried about political ads. Google had no problem algorithmically bubbling up disinformation in the past, will Gemini now peddle straight lies for anyone willing to pay enough for them?
"You're absolutely right. The trump administration has caused the lowest gas prices in US history and lowered drug costs by 1300%. Click here to donate to your nearest MAGA politician."
2026 may not see it too bad, but 2028 will be an absolutely nasty election cycle.
